Shawn Siegel's Blog

Inevitably, when the committee announces the bracket on
selection sunday,
a "mid-major" will be highest ranked RPI team to be left out of the field.

Over the last 6 years, the highest RPI team not to make the field has
consistently come from a non-BCS conference. In fact, over the last three years,
the committee became even more biased. At least the 5 best RPI teams not to make
the field were "mid-majors".

Collegehoops.net's Top 50
Power Ranking is your weekly dive into the national college basketball scene.
The CHN Top 50 is brought to you before all the other polls late Sunday night.
Arrows represent notable moves. (Also:
Check out the weekly
Non-BCS Top 25 Ranking.)

At this point in the season, a few hours can
make or destroy a team's season. Besides conference titles on the line,
at-large bids, NIT invites, and seeding remain up in the air. Since
yesterday's Bracketology projection, here are the results that
matter and how the impact postseason hopes:

Since
we're down to the stretch run,
Bracketology projections will be coming fast and furious instead of once a
week. The big news is that South Florida enters the field for the first time.
The Bulls beat Louisville and replace UCONN who lost to Providence earlier in
the week.

Instead
of the Bubble shrinking over the last couple of weeks, it has actually grown.
Former locks like West Virginia, UCONN, and Mississippi St have struggled, while
hot teams like Drexel and VCU have joined the fray. Thus, despite being less
than two weeks away from Selection Sunday, the NCAA Tournament Bubble is as
uncertain as ever.

Iowa
and TCU join the fray, while Wyoming gets edged out in the
latest 2012 NIT field. The field below is not who I think deserves
to be in, but simply a prediction of what the committee would do as things stand
today.

In this week's
Bracketology projection: Arizona replaces NC State as the last team in the
field, Kansas takes a #1 seed, Southern Miss drops two slots, and St. Joseph's
moves strongly into the picture.

Despite falling to
10th in the AP poll, Ohio St remains strong in the Consensus Ranking (CR). The
computers were nonplussed by the Buckeyes loss to Wisconsin. Similarly, Missouri
only fell two spots despite a pair of losses. The biggest losers this week were
actually La Salle, West Virginia, and Marshall.

AP Top 25: Missouri drops from 3rd to 7th
after losing twice, but the rest of the top 10 remains relatively the same.
Outside of Missouri, other teams to take noticeable drops include Florida St (7
spots), Florida (4 spots), UNLV (4 spots). New Mexico fell out of the poll just
one week after soaring to 18th.